"Very erotic!" That's how a woman whom we'll call "Cathy" described the beginning of her relationship with "Matt." "Sex, sex, sex," she said, "and sweet whisperings in my ears." After a whirlwind romance, they married. Cathy eventually discovered that sex was all Matt really wanted. She found a duffel bag filled with hard-core porn. His sexual demands made her uncomfortable. He cheated. Yet whenever Matt did or said anything hurtful, he soon acted as if nothing had happened. Matt turned out to be callous, deceitful, manipulative, narcissistic, hostile, irresponsible, reckless and impulsive. In other words, he was a sociopath. Many people think that sociopaths are all deranged serial …
Recounting domestic violence through poetry
Editor's note: The following poem was submitted by a Lovefraud reader. The Classic Abuser By Madeleine Mariani This pain in my head is from a concussion It didn't come from any discussion My loving husband hit me square in my head He was trying to kill me as I slept and hoped I'd be dead It has been several hours now and I still feel the pain And tears still flow down my face like an afternoon rain There are laws in place that are supposed to protect me I tried to remember that as I laid on the floor Beat up and bleeding and filled with such gloom As my children were screaming from their own bedroom Daddy, please don't hurt mommy, Not anymore As the rage and beating continued as I laid on …
FTC survey shows 25.6 million Americans fell victim to fraud in 2011
WASHINGTON, D.C. The Federal Trade Commission released on April 19, 2013 a statistical survey of fraud in the United States during 2011, which showed that an estimated 25.6 million adults — 10.8 percent of the adult population — were fraud victims. “The FTC fights fraud every day by taking scammers to court and telling consumers how to avoid being scammed. Studieslike this one help us fine-tune both our enforcement and education efforts,” said Charles Harwood, Acting Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. While fast-growing online commerce has benefitted consumers with greater choice and convenience, the survey indicates that, as of 2011, the Internet was also the place w …
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An open letter to lawyers who have clients involved with sociopaths
Dear Mr. or Ms. Esquire, When a client tells you his or her opponent is a sociopath, please be aware of the ramifications for your legal case. First of all, do not disregard the statement just because the opponent hasn't killed anyone. A common perception is that sociopaths (people who have antisocial, narcissistic, borderline, histrionic or psychopathic personality disorders) are all deranged serial killers. This is not true—only a small percentage of sociopaths commit murder. But all sociopaths are social predators, and live by exploiting others. Frequently this is financial exploitation—many sociopaths are skilled con artists—but not always. Sociopaths also target people who can p …
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Sociopathic deceit: Plan or second nature?
Lovefraud recently received the following question from a reader: When a sociopath targets his victim, does he think and create a plan as to HOW he is going to manipulate his prey to glean what he wants, or is this just second nature to him? How can he spend MONTHS being such a kind, considerate person, going out of his way to do the "little" things that matter in life, before turning into the evil monster? When you have been deceived and manipulated by a sociopath, the most difficult idea to grasp is how totally different people with this personality disorder are from the rest of us. Their behavior is different from everything we thought we knew about human i …
BOOK REVIEW: I’m still standing, by Lovefraud’s Mel Carnegie
If you've been reading Lovefraud for awhile, you've probably been inspired by the many encouraging articles contributed by Mel Carnegie, a British woman now living in France who experienced her own devastating marriage to a sociopath. Now, you can read her complete story in her new book, I'm Still Standing, and be even more inspired. Mel has told us snippets of her story: how she lost her father, and then her mother, while she was young. How she was abandoned by her guardians. How she had a son, although the relationship didn't last. And then how she met the man who she thought was the love of her life, only to be totally betrayed. In I'm Still Standing, Mel takes us along on her journey, …
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PTSD from the military perspective
Master Sgt. James Haskell, an Air Force gunner, was one of the first responders of 9/11, flying over Ground Zero as it smoldered below. A year later, he sought help for PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder. He describes what he experienced and why he went for counseling. Many Lovefraud readers who were in relationships with sociopaths have exactly the same symptoms. PTSD: Many struggle, few tell, on Holoman.af.mil. Link supplied by a Lovefraud reader. …
Seriously lacking: ‘Savvy Senior’ advice about online dating
Savvy Senior, a syndicated column that appears in more than 400 newspapers and magazines across the United States, calls itself an information service for baby boomers and senior citizens. The author, Jim Miller, recently published an article called Looking for love and companionship online. It started with a question from a reader: Dear Savvy Senior: What can you tell me about online dating for older people? My daughter has been urging me to give it a try, but at age 62, I'm a little hesitant. Lonely Senior Miller responded by describing the mechanics of online dating—how to choose a dating site and how to create a profile. He encouraged seniors to "make an effort" and n …
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Believing the fantasy rather than evidence
Hundreds of people in northwest Western Australia have been sending money to criminals from West Africa. The con artists target vulnerable people through dating websites and social networking. Even when police officers show evidence that they are being scammed, some targets continue to send money. ABC news quoted a detective: "No matter how much we can explain and show them documents, photos etc to face the reality that they have been defrauded and the dream is not real, for a lot of victims it's too much for them to accept so they continue to believe the dream until they have nothing left," he said. 'Love' scam victims conned 'until nothing left,' on ABC.net.au …
What happens when we fail to take action against bad behavior
A few articles in the news recently illustrate a disturbing failure in that can be seen in a multitude of situations throughout society. These cases are from the U.S., but I imagine the pattern applies just about anywhere. In Dallas, Texas, Antoine Flowers, hired for a top information technology post at Dallas City Hall, resigned after four months on the job. Two weeks later, he was arrested for stealing and pawning $10,000 worth of the city's iPads. The real question is how he got hired in the first place. Flowers' resume stated that he'd worked as a software engineer at NASA, was a college education director and had served in the Army, with top-secret clearances. This did not raise …
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